


The Ashford-Baskerville Project

by inthemouthofthewolf



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:17:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthemouthofthewolf/pseuds/inthemouthofthewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson never came home from war. Not really. After the hospital, he was sent to Baskerville, where they did all kinds of tests. Tests designed to destroy John Watson. -- for a while I was stuck on writing the place's protocol or its battery of tests and was going to pull out all the creative horrible stops, but then I realised that the things that really happen can be infinitely more terrible than the things that happen inside my head, so I based this off of MK-Ultra. Look it up if you want.<br/>Triggery if you've been a nonconsenting participant in a laboratory setting or if you've been drugged against your will</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ashford-Baskerville Project

It hadn’t. Not in so long. Suffocating, was that the word? It was suffocating in the miniscule space, all quiet. Forever it didn’t know how much time had passed, it didn’t know there was such a thing as time anymore, it couldn’t be certain; it was dark constantly. There were the hidden edges of the room but it was not permitted to touch them. The emptiness went on forever. At first, it thought it remembered that they used to do something to the walls somehow, make it hurt to touch them, just enough that it resigned itself to the middle of the floor, a vast expanse that seemed to go on for eternity, but it didn’t think that actually happened, did it? It would welcome the pain, if only just to feel something in this isolation, but was too numb to move much.

 

It felt when it dreamed of terrible, beautiful things. War, sunlight, green grass, gunfire, a Silver Chair. Sometimes they were fever-dreams, induced in its waking state by some sort of injection.

 

Your heartbeat fills your ears, deafens you, because the room is a void. Your thoughts are dim from disuse, from the warping and twisting your psyche endures endlessly. You can try to speak, but you’re not really even sure because you can’t hear your voice in your own ears, you don’t know whether you made a sound at all, and you never will. You haven’t in so long. Whispers at the corners of your mind, doctors, scientists, all around you, crowding eternity; you used to turn wildly looking for the source, but it was useless. You just sat still and emotionless on the floor now, arms wrapped around your knees if only for that solitary tactile feeling to ground you. The silence is all-encompassing and oppressive. Crushing.

 

“Indications of extreme psychological stress.” The scientist behind the one-way glass said, watching John Watson through special goggles, watched John sit idle, mumbling things that even it couldn’t hear, couldn’t fathom existed. John probably didn’t realize its mouth was moving.

 

“Hypothesize nonexistent affect when questioned. We’ll take the subject out, now. It’s been nearly three hours; I think we’ve collected all the data we can from it for now, and the subject will be the most receptive to outside stimuli at the present time.”

 

AB-S-CONDOR II trial LXVII phase 1 complete.

 

The solitary door opened in a supernova. Purely on reflex it shielded its eyes, crying out in agony. It felt strong hands grabbing it, all hypersensitive from being in the void, and it hurt, and its cry hurt, and there was a ceaseless overpowering roaring in its years... Shell-shocked, physically overwhelmed by the blast of reality. The bright lights always blinded it—it could never get a good look around it when it was being almost dragged along what it assumed was a hallway of sorts. It would limp when left to its own devices, and the men in white coats were impatient. It didn’t realize until now that it hadn’t stopped screaming from the sudden sensory overload. It throat ached so raw it wondered for a moment whether or not this had happened before; it couldn’t be certain. It found itself led to another room, just as blindingly bright; spots danced and blocked its vision. It shuffled obediently over to its customary position—funny, it wondered, that it had a usual place to be if this was indeed the first time this had happened—and was helped up none too gently onto the stainless steel table, where it was immediately strapped down tight, completely prone. Its eyes were watering, its head felt like it was about to explode, its skull bursting and spraying brain matter all about in an equally as intense supernova as the one it currently found itself within. The cold from the table was biting and not grounding in the least—it felt like it was spinning out of control, the walls warping, voices echoing deafeningly and not making one iota of sense. Its face was smashed against the unforgiving stainless and there was a sharp jab in its old wounded shoulder—how did that happen? It wondered, an uncanny thought came to mind that shoulder almost rhymed with soldier. It filled the lab with a bloodcurdling scream.

 

Then the questions started—demands, really.

They were posed in a cold, mechanical manner, and that was almost as disturbing to it as the acoustic torture it was putting it through. It took a few repetitions of the same question before it understood. It remembered fighting back at the questions posed to it some time ago, a quick flash, an image of realization, and it balled its hands into fists and its knuckles went white. The flexing of its hands was one of the few small movements it was capable of.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“… What?”

 

“Your name.”

 

It was just on the edge of his mind, in the fringes of grey now. It reached out for it, it tried to pull it close and force it from his lips if only to stop the increasing terror it was feeling as its shoulder was pressed into more forcefully.

 

“I don’t-- … don’t know.” It sighed finally in bitter defeat. The lady in the white coat took several notes on a clip-board that was just as severe looking as the woman’s face.

 

“You don’t know because you don’t have one.” She answered calmly, watching John Watson blink, not understanding. It was wondering how this could be, but also feeling the familiarity that it was probably the right answer; it had no name.

 

“Oh.” It replied, lamely.

 

“Now, those dreams you’ve been having. Have they continued?”

 

“…Yes.”

 

“Grass? Sunlight? Bullets? The usual themes?”

 

“Yes.”

 

The lady in the white-coat tisked at this, taking more notes.

 

“You know those things are a complete fabrication of your imagination?”

                                                                                                

“You mean there’s nothing else out there?” There was just… this? White sterile walls and darkened barren cells?

 

“No. You’ve been very sick. We’re trying to help you. You’ve been in this facility all your life.”

 

“But… but… if this place is a facility, there must be some place _outside_ the facility, right?”

 

“Incorrect.” Blinding pain—the men in the white coats had seen it fit to bring out the electrodes—it must have been asking too many questions—a sudden jolt in its shoulder, as if it had been hit in the back with great force by a cannonball. It shocked it into a yelp, and then into silence, making it wonder, maybe they were right. This was its life.

 

The interrogation continued. They asked for everything, and they always told it no, no, that doesn’t exist. It was always intensely bewildering—how was it always, wasn’t this the first time?—and it made it doubt itself, that all the things it knew, that they were all wrong. It didn’t like the thought that it was really this sick that all it had were handfuls of delusions.

 

The last standard question, “On a scale of 1 to 100, 100 being the most, how would you rate your current state of distress?”

 

A little remaining bit of John Watson finally shone through. It blinked the tears out of its eyes and gave a tiny sarcastic smirk, a hint of defiance, though it was trembling from head to toe—“110” It whispered; it barely managed to get the words out before a long needle was stabbed into it, a swift injection, things swimming and being devoured by grey, and then all faded into darkness.


End file.
